Pulse
by Black Dracus
Summary: Fifty times their hearts learned to beat again. Unofficial onesentence. Cid/Yuffie


**01. Comfort**

Cid finds an odd kind of tranquility when he begins to work with the Gummi. It's greasy in all the wrong ways, and he doesn't get to use a wrench as much as he'd like, but the work gives him a comfort that Aerith and her endless cups of chamomile could never provide.

**02. Kiss**

The first time Yuffie wants to kiss him they are arguing heatedly about Merlin, and for once she is glad he's chewing a toothpick so she has a reason to restrain herself.

**03. Soft**

He finds one rolling around in the very bottom of one of his backpacks, the small golden vial, the liquid inside that ran down your scalp and into your eyes, bringing back your flesh in runny dribbles until you could breathe again. He gives it a place of honor in the shop, on a shelf high above the sales floor, and when Huey asks him what it is, Yuffie laughs for a good while at his halting attempts to explain status effects. (To his infinite surprise, Leon recognizes it immediately)

**04. Pain**

They all deal with it in their own way. Aerith bakes and gardens. Cloud does what he has always done, and runs, either physically or just into his own mind. Leon spends fourteen hour days hunting Heartless and then collapses into sleep so heavy that he cannot dream, though sometimes he speaks. Yuffie just keeps her eyes on tomorrow, on the horizon, and usually she can convince Cid to help her fly there in his ships built for yesterday.

**05. Potatoes**

One of the things Cid doesn't understand about this place they have ended up is the food: he's lost ten pounds (that Aerith teases him needed to go anyway) because of too-sweet milk, bread that is dry and porous like a used-up sponge, meat that doesn't fall off the bone the right way. He'd kill for a few of Shera's potatoes, covered in pieces of the Planet that he would never, ever rinse down the sink.

**06. Rain**

Sometimes when it rains she stands outside with her round face turned up, arms and legs long and luminous in the perpetual twilight, until he is sure she will drown. He has to call out the window a few times until she heeds him, and when she comes in, steam curls off her clothes like the incense he saw them burn in Wutai and her eyes are full of emptiness.

**07. Chocolate**

He's never thought about the color of her eyes before until she looks up from her cake with icing smeared across her cheek, darkening the spaces in between her teeth as she grins.

**08. Happiness**

Yuffie finds she is happiest in Traverse when she is enveloped in the warmth of Cid's shop, counting the little Munny he has earned into the safe while he locks the front door, polishes the display counter, and sweeps toothpick fragments from under his chair, singing lewd shanties that she hopes to learn the choruses of eventually.

**09. Telephone**

There is no such thing as the telephone in this place, and the day she finds Pluto with the remains of the PHS dangling from between his fangs, his tail going a mile a minute, she and Aerith sit at the table for half an hour, caught up in a fit of cathartic laughter that filled the house with buoyant light for days.

**10. Ears**

He re-pierces them for her one night after the shop is closed. She sits nervously on the display counter, the ice in his hand slowly melting onto her bare thighs, down the length of his forearm. He calls her a brat and all sorts of other names—including Princess--around his clenched teeth, and it isn't until she looks in the mirror at home that she notices he's made the long, dangling earrings out of tiny chips of useless Materia, gold and green and red and even a little purple that she likes to think was a Chocobo Lure.

**11. Name**

It is Cloud, who despite all his shortcomings still considers it his duty to watch over them all, that notices first they have gone from "Old Man" and "skinny good-for-nothing brat" to "Cid" and "Yuffie". When he points it out to Aerith, she just smiles, and seats them next to each other at breakfast the next day.

**12. Sensual**

The days when she spars with him are different than with Leon or Cloud or Aerith: there's something unbearably erotic about the way he chuckles during a fight, the sight of him without the toothpick, about the way his sweat smells in the still, small room, how his blue eyes cut across her flesh the way he does not dare any other time, the blood from one of their many shallow wounds beaded in his pale bangs.

**13. Death**

When Aerith is returned to them, they both hover by the fountain for days, waiting for Barrett's nappy head, Tifa's heaving bosom, Reeve's three piece suit, Vincent's claws or Red's twitching tail. Shit, she would have been happy to see the Turks with Godo as a new trainee. The only one she prays death keeps a firm grip on (this with a little bit of guilt at the hesitant hope in Cid's sea-salt eyes) is Shera.

**14. Sex**

She always knew Cid was a huge tease, but she never imagined it could make her feel _good._

**15. Touch**

They've always been free with touch, slinging arms around each other in comradeship, resting tired feet in one another's laps, exchanging jubilant hi-fives and once (after a particularly legendary night of bar hopping in Costa Del Sol) closed-fisted blows that ended with Cid in the care of Aerith and Yuffie in the brig of the airship, per Cloud's orders. But the way he touches her now, sometimes--the way his hand curls into her hair or snakes around her waist—it's different.

**16. Weakness**

It doesn't take him long to figure out not to underestimate her; youth and exuberance are weaknesses that can be remedied by a quick wit and a respectable slug shot. For her part, she started admiring him the first time he sprung into the sky, muscles she thought were too aged to function sending him up like, ironically, a rocket.

**17. Tears**

The one thing none of them ever do is cry. Cid isn't sure if it's because they're moving on, or because the grief is still solid, sitting in their bellies like shrapnel, something they just move _in spite of_.

**18. Speed**

She's usually nimble and agile by the time she makes it down to the breakfast table, but the first time they wake up together Cid finds himself surprised at the slow drag of her steps, the fumble of the toothbrush into her mouth—she crawls back into bed twice before dressing, and that surprises him too, but pleasantly.

**19. Wind**

He gets the clock from Merlin, who broke it years ago--mages know nothing about technology, Aerith can barely work the stove some days--and when he's finally repaired it, polished the wood to a mellow glow and replaced all the brass, it is Yuffie who winds it every day, nimble fingers snaking around the back to twist the little key and help them keep track of hours that don't really mean anything. (Cid eventually begins to suspect, when the ticking fills the store too loudly, that this is why Merlin let the clock break. Asshole.)

**20. Freedom**

It isn't until Yuffie sees Sora, the new hero in a new story, that she realizes how liberated they are now, without the weight of responsibility. (She also realizes they will shoulder it again before Sora even thinks to ask.)

**21. Life**

Every time she kills a Heartless, Yuffie takes a brief moment, usually not more than a second or two, to close her eyes and just be alive, blood flowing through flesh, lungs and stomach and muscles coordinated in harmony so perfect that it is the solitary goal of these non-beings to eliminate it.

**22. Jealousy**

He knows there's nothing to the rumors, but he hates seeing Yuffie talking so animatedly with Leon all the same.

**23. Hands**

She has the most telling, unladylike hands he's ever seen: knotty knuckles broken dozens of times from throwing punches, calluses cradling the pads of her fingers where for years she has carried the shuriken. Her palms are square and scarred, and sometimes when she sleeps he traces the lines from the beginning to the end to the beginning and wonders if she even remembers where they came from.

**24. Taste**

Cid might make fun of her short shorts and long scarves, but it isn't her fault his imagination doesn't progress further than white tee shirts and blue jeans. Not everyone is born with taste. (But then again, he chose her).

**25. Devotion**

The rest of the materia she has strung into ropes to decorate her room, but Leviathan has been left tucked in a chest under her bed—some things aren't for everyone to see.

**26. Forever**

After the first year, when his hair hasn't grown a single inch, he starts to understand what forever means these days. When he brings it up, she shrugs, and directs his attention to the sky that never lightens more than a few shades.

**27. Blood**

The only reason she questions whether or not she loves Cid is the relief that floods her belly when she wakes up every fourth Thursday or so and drips medallions of blood into the toilet. He isn't worth giving up that much for—at least not yet.

**28. Sickness**

They pass a head cold back and forth for five weeks or so, stuffy nosed kisses and endless handkerchiefs. Aerith suggests that they try to avoid each other, but it only works for a day and a half— the cold isn't bad enough to warrant such lonely hours, but it is made worse by suffering it alone.

**29. Melody**

She doesn't think Cid has a very good singing voice, but the cadence of his rough speech, the rise and fall of his curse words and his half-syllables, is lovely to her. That, and she knows it annoys him when she closes her eyes during one of his tirades and just _listens_.

**30. Star**

Shortly after they arrive in Traverse Town, before they ever think to love each other, they spend a night sitting on a brick wall, passing a jug of cheap red wine back and forth and inventing new constellations, and they only name two of them after old summons and none of them after the dead.

**31. Home**

Hollow Bastion is not Wutai or Rocket Town, but sometimes when the wind blows the right way Cid can smell fuel and oil, and Yuffie swears the pattern of the tiles in the courtyard looks just like Da Chao, and there is Aerith, and Cloud, and, somehow, blessedly, Tifa. And so they stay, and when Yuffie calls it home for the first time he doesn't correct her like he used to before they came here.

**32. Confusion**

Yuffie refuses to admit she was in love—really in love—with Cloud, but she's unsure what makes those feelings different than the ones she has for Cid. She's unsure what she even feels for Cid; she only knows she can't stop picking fights, fishing for compliments, can't stop worrying what her hair, her face looks like to him, and she certainly can't walk away.

**33. Fear**

When they first arrive in Traverse, Cid is terrified by their new liberty, though he'd never admit it. His whole life he's been doing what others told him, and those first days he wakes up certain he cannot bear this freedom.

**34. Lightning/Thunder**

She's always liked thunder spells best and so it is these she works to remaster, trying to understand that the magic must come from within her somehow, drawn up from her blood and bones. She's never thought of her life as something that can be expended so easily before, and it is in these efforts that she forms such a strong friendship with Leon, who has known all along how to hold himself up to the altar of power and pray he will be worthy.

**35. Bond**

Cid wonders only once if their relationship is the product of necessity or fate; if, left on the Planet, they would have formed the same bond. Then he looks at her, haggling with Sora over the price of some Gummi, and decides it doesn't matter—what matters is, it happened.

**36. Market**

Sending her to the market is like playing Russian Roulette with their supper; they never know what they will get, recipes she's learned from Aerith or Merlin that she cheerfully dishes out mildly charred, or Wutaian delicacies she perfectly prepares with misty eyes. As time passes it is usually the former, and her eyes hardly ever water anymore, and Cid is viciously glad that both her sorrow and the raw fish are gone.

**37. Technology**

She is both amused and jealous by his reaction to the computer at Hollow Bastion; he's not home nearly so often, but she always knows where to find him, and when he teaches her to play a few games and use the word processor to keep a journal she even starts to like the thing a little.

**38. Gift**

The spear is a gift from Leon, who finds it tucked away in some far corner of the Bailey. Cid accepts it silently and though he gives it pride of place on the living room wall he never uses it to kill a single Heartless. Yuffie tries her best to understand, but after the particularly hard days at the Coliseum, or nights spent scrabbling for every square inch of cobblestone in the alleys of town, she can barely be in the house with the weapon he still refuses to use for reasons he won't give—just a stare, and he leaves the room with tight shoulders.

**39. Smile**

They both wear false smiles a lot of the time, wry, vaguely condescending smirks in his case and disarming, broad grins in hers. True smiles these days are as rare as the events that cause them, but some days he still sees the corner of her mouth turn up in a crooked expression of joy when he lets loose a particularly vehement curse; sometimes, she catches his dimples in the morning mirror when she has used too much toothpaste and foams like Pluto with a mouth full of antacids.

**40. Innocence**

He admits to himself—but never to her--that the big eyes and knee socks had him fooled for a while. It wasn't until the first time they fell into bed together, all teeth and sweat and half-whispered curses, that he really discovered just how wrong he was.

**41. Completion**

When they finally give up the ghost and she moves into the small apartment over the shop, he's surprised at how peaceful the flat feels, even with ninja stars stuck in the ceiling beam and her panties drying on the backs of the dining room chairs. It's as if her and her things had been waiting to move in all along. (He makes her remove the ninja stars, but lets her leave the panties.)

**42. Clouds**

"If we have a child, I know which comrade we aren't naming it after," she says one night when they are walking home from a party half drunk. "We don't need more than one Cloud floating around." There are a few beats of silence, and then they both laugh all the way home to avoid saying the name Jenova.

**43. Sky**

The sky is more static than he's used to, and the Heartless have warped space into some strange obstacle course rife with pirate ships and hoops to fly through, but it still feels good to feel that engine rumble, to watch the sky change hues as he pushes out of the atmosphere, and if the sky gets lighter rather than darker, and there are no stars, well, he'll just have to learn to deal with it.

**44. Heaven**

The mornings he doesn't open the shop until late are the best; he makes her pancakes better than any she has ever tasted, and they perch on the bar stools in his big open kitchen and make a big mess with the syrup, and he'll play old records he found somewhere, strange music that Yuffie doesn't know if she likes or not. Sometimes Sora or Leon will yell up at them from outside to open up, and he'll yell back at them to go away, and the light tangles up in his hair, and she thinks that maybe she has died in her sleep and gone to an unimaginable paradise.

**45. Hell**

The mornings Leon pounds on the door are the worst; he lies in bed and pretends to be asleep while she pulls on her clothes, tucks weapons into hidden pockets, straps armor over her knees and her arms. The shuriken always casts a big shadow when she hefts it, and outside he can hear Merlin chanting spells at the Heartless, keeping them off long enough for Yuffie to get out the door without them getting in it, because they all know he either couldn't or wouldn't fight them off. Not even a butter knife. He can't explain to her the way his joints lock up, the way _defending_ means _getting attached_ and it's bad enough he's tangled up with her. Those mornings, he thinks maybe he has died in his sleep and gone on to an unimaginable anguish.

**46. Sun**

When he takes her to the Coliseum for the tournaments he picks the seat furthest from the shadows of the columns that he can. Traverse is a dark place, and he loves the way the harsh light heats his shoulders through the white shirt. Still, he's not about to move here; he hasn't missed the shades on all the windows that Herc and the gang pull down so they can sleep.

**47. Moon**

She often wonders if he remembers the time he, Cloud, and Red came back to the buggy after running through the forests near Gongaga and she had mooned them, pressing her bare ass against the glass of the window to the tune of laughter from everyone else in the buggy; even Vince had smirked, Cait Sith shouting accolades through the megaphone, Barret cursing her fool head. Cid had climbed in and told her that next time she showed him her ass he'd kick her in it. He hasn't made good yet, and she's loath to remind him.

**48. Waves**

She always waves as she walks away, even if she's just going into the other room; a tiny curve of her wrist near her thigh that he thinks is more like a request not to be forgotten or left behind than a reassurance that she will return.

**49. Hair**

He wishes she would let her hair grow, but every six weeks she hands him a pair of thin sharp scissors and the ashy brown shavings curl into his sink—she insists on standing with her back to the mirror while he cuts. When he's done, she jerks the scissors from his hands and snips at his hair for a few minutes; he never sees a difference, but she insists he looks less scruffy.

**50. Supernova**

"I love you," and the world falls apart into color and joy so fierce it burns.


End file.
